Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/138

 and as distinct as are the entities of any kind or class of beings; (e) finally, beginning with the seventh and up to the twelfth century, the Diacletians, whom many regarded as a branch of the Manichean sect, and who, indeed, like the Manicheans, worshipped two gods, the god of good and the god of evil.” (pp. 76 and 77.)

I am told that God is one and trine, and I am told this is a divine, revealed truth. I cannot understand it, and I look for an explanation. What use is there in telling me how incorrectly the pagans believed in assuming two or three gods? It is clear to me that they did not have the same conception about God which I have,—so what is the use of talking to me about them? I want to have the dogma explained to me, so why talk to me about these pagans and Christians who believed in two and in three gods? I am not a bitheist nor a tritheist. The refutal of these bitheists and tritheists does not clear up my question; and yet it is on this conception of the heretics that the whole exposition of the dogma about the unity of God is based, and not by accident. As before, when, in the question about the comprehensibility and incomprehensibility of God, the exposition of the church doctrine about it was connected with and even based on the refutal of the false doctrines, so even here, the doctrine is not expounded directly on the basis of traditions, reason, or mutual connection, but only on the basis of the contradictions of the other teachings, called heresies. In the doctrine about the Trinity, the divinity of the Son, the substance of the Son, there is everywhere one and the same method: it does not say there that the church teaches so and so for this or that reason, but it always says that some have taught that God is entirely comprehensible, others, that God is entirely incomprehensible, but that neither is correct, for the truth is so and so.

In the doctrine about the Son it does not say that the Son is this or that, but some have taught that he is en-